Automatically refresh display of html on saving file
Editing HTML in Vim is a lot nicer if you can see updates in Firefox without needing to remove your hands from the keyboard. With MozRepl and a little vimrc script, you can do just that! The bad old way You are probably all too familiar with this annoying mini-workflow: *Edit your HTML/CSS file. *Hit save in Vim. *CMD/CNTRL/ALT + TAB over to Firefox. *Press Ctrl-R in Firefox to refresh. *CMD/CNTRL/ALT + TAB back to Vim. *Do it again and again, wincing a little bit each time. The joyful new Vim + MozRepl way With the little vimrc + MozRepl hack shown below, all you need to do is: *Edit your HTML/css file. *Hit save in Vim – Firefox will refresh automatically, preserving its scroll offsets! This integration is no where near as fancy as the Emacs MozRepl binding, but this one feature makes it super useful. Vim + MozRepl When editing an .html,.css, or .gtpl file, make Firefox refresh after the buffer is saved, preserving the current scroll offset. Requires #MozRepl must be installed and running in Firefox. After installation, start it in Tools > MozRepl > Start. #Netcat (nc) must be on your path. #Firefox and Vim are both on the same machine (localhost). How it works I use echo + netcat (nc) to send a dopey little MosRepl script (see below) to Firefox. All the output is tossed away (2>&1 > /dev/null) because MozRepl is chatty. Global variables are used (vimXo, vimYo) to capture the X,Y offset of the web page for Vim. Maybe there's a way to not use a global, but I don't know what that might be. After saving the buffer and reloading the browser, scroll to the X,Y offset. See also: *http://wiki.github.com/bard/mozrepl/tutorial *http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/495300.html Code for vimrc autocmd BufWriteCmd *.html,*.css,*.gtpl :call Refresh_firefox() function! Refresh_firefox() if &modified write silent !echo 'vimYo = content.window.pageYOffset; \ vimXo = content.window.pageXOffset; \ BrowserReload(); \ content.window.scrollTo(vimXo,vimYo); \ repl.quit();' | \ nc -w 1 localhost 4242 2>&1 > /dev/null endif endfunction - added "-w 1" flag to netcat to solve occasional hung connections A few additions To put in vimrc: command! -nargs=1 Repl silent !echo \ "repl.home(); \ content.location.href = ''; \ repl.enter(content); \ repl.quit();" | \ nc localhost 4242 nmap mh :Repl http:// " mnemonic is MozRepl Http nmap ml :Repl file:///%:p " mnemonic is MozRepl Local nmap md :Repl http://localhost/ " mnemonic is MozRepl Development Now, when working on local html files, if you switch files often then just press ml and the file is shown in Firefox. Also, mh will bring you to ex mode where you can type in a URL and go there in Firefox etc. Scrolling I use these commands to scroll up and down: nnoremap :call Firefox_scroll_down() function! Firefox_scroll_down() silent call system("echo 'content.window.scrollByPages(1); repl.quit();' | nc -w 1 localhost 4242") endfunction nnoremap :call Firefox_scroll_up() function! Firefox_scroll_up() silent call system("echo 'content.window.scrollByPages(-1); repl.quit();' | nc -w 1 localhost 4242") endfunction Next and previous tab Here are commands for next and previous tab in Firefox. nnoremap :call Firefox_next_tab() function! Firefox_next_tab() call system("echo 'var tabc = window.getBrowser().tabContainer; var tabs = tabc.childNodes; var index = tabc.selectedIndex; if (index ! tabs.length -1) { tabc.selectedItem = tabs+ 1; } else { tabc.selectedItem = tabs0; } repl.quit()' | nc -w 1 localhost 4242") endfunction nnoremap :call Firefox_prev_tab() function! Firefox_prev_tab() call system("echo 'var tabc = window.getBrowser().tabContainer; var tabs = tabc.childNodes; var index = tabc.selectedIndex; if (index 0) { tabc.selectedItem = tabs- 1; } else { tabc.selectedItem = tabs- 1; } repl.quit()' | nc -w 1 localhost 4242") endfunction See also *original Vim+MozRepl posting Comments Excellent! Needed something to replace LiveReload on my Linux workstation at work. This did the trick. Thanks. ---- Maybe need to add :redraw or :redraw! after reload if web page. --July 22, 2014